Save Yourself (6 page)

“It’s not a biology teacher’s place to teach sex ed,” Toby said. “When I was in school, they taught that stuff in Health.”

“Were you out sick the day they covered drug abuse?”

Toby, shaking his head, said, “You can’t get a rise out of me, Layla,” and she grinned and said, “Oh, I think I could. If I really wanted to.”

“I’m going to go tell your father we’re done,” he said, curtly, and left.

“What a loser,” Layla said. “Doesn’t he make you want to stab yourself in the eye?”

“Not really,” Verna said. “Are you going to help me finish these?”

“No. Those make me want to stab myself in the eye, too.” Layla stood, picked up one of the folders, and made a face at her own image, then held it up in front of her face and Verna. “Bleah!” she said, in a monster voice, waggling the folder back and forth. “I am the Jesus zombie! I will steal your soul! And your eyeliner! And any skirts less than twenty-four inches long! Bleah!”

Verna rolled her eyes. Layla laughed and tossed the folder back down.

“Oh, I kill me,” she said. “Hey, Vee, by the way, speaking of death and zombies and other unpleasant things—there’s this girl at school, Calleigh Brinker? Hot redhead, legs up to wherever?”

“I met her.”

“Yeah, well,” Layla said. Suddenly all the humor was gone from her voice. “Steer clear. She’s Hensley’s niece. She’s also just the tiniest bit psychotic.”

Verna wished the ground would open up and swallow the school building overnight, so she never had to go there again.

At dinner, Dad said, “Toby said you could have been more helpful with the information packets, Layla.”

“Toby was high as a kite,” Layla said. “I’m surprised he didn’t say I could have been a flying giraffe.”

“Toby has a lot of wisdom to share, if you’d let him.”

“As well as more than one blood-borne disease, I don’t doubt.” If Layla’s previous smile had been a perfect mirror of Justinian’s, the sunny one she flashed now was a perfect mirror of their father’s. “Shall I let him share those with me, too?”

The big muscles at the corners of Dad’s jaw clenched and unclenched. He did that a lot when Layla was around. The shirt Dad was wearing and the way he was wearing it, open down the front with a T-shirt underneath, reminded Verna of the boy from Biology.
Mother was setting out bowls of turkey chili and salad and arranging plates of cheese and chopped onion and cilantro on the Lazy Susan. Her hair, a darker blond than Layla’s used to be, was carefully pinned up, and her nails were freshly manicured. Even pulling open a bag of corn chips, Mother was lovely: well-groomed, well-exercised, well-dressed, all of it. Dad was the same way. When you ran a ministry you had to be presentable. The two of them played a lot of tennis and used a lot of personal-care products. They smelled nice, but they made Verna feel like Sasquatch.

Passing the chips—and changing the subject—Mother asked if they’d had a good first day of school. Layla said that it promised to be the best year ever, if only she could make cheer captain. Everyone ignored her.

“How did Biology go, Verna?” Dad asked.

“Fine.”

“Layla, do you have salad?” Mother asked.

“I’m a vegetarian,” Layla said. “All I have is salad.”

“Mr. Guarda didn’t give you any trouble?”

Verna shook her head.

“At least eat a little of your chili,” Mother said to Layla.

“If you want me to eat it, don’t put corpse meat in it.”

“You’re going to become anemic.”

“This is good, Michelle.” Dad poured chips onto his chili. “I wouldn’t mind taking a look at your textbook, Verna.”

“Karen Hensley never used a book,” Mother said.

Verna swallowed. “They cut the reproduction part out, though, so …”

Her voice trailed off. Dad smiled at her. “Verna, honey, we know you don’t like to make trouble.”

Verna looked down at her food.

“I, of course, love to make trouble,” Layla said.

“Layla,” Dad said, a note of warning in his voice.

“What? You didn’t mind so much when it was your trouble. Back
then it was, ‘When’s your next protest, Layla? How many signatures did you get on your petition, Layla? Hey, Layla, maybe you should organize a walkout, I’ll call Channel Seven.’ ”

All of which was true, Verna thought. “All trouble is not created equal,” Dad said now. “I wouldn’t object to you using physical force to defend yourself, but that doesn’t mean you should walk around hitting people for fun.”

Layla stuck her knife in her chili. “I’ll cancel my weekend plans, then.”

Mother sighed. “Layla, must you? Now that knife is going to have to be washed,” she said, and Layla answered, “If you didn’t want us to use them, you shouldn’t have put them on the table.”

Dad cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he said to Verna, “this particular issue is bigger than whether or not Guarda teaches the same lessons Karen Hensley did. It’s about our right to believe what we believe. Persecution versus freedom, truth versus lies—all of those big ideas that seem very abstract, but in the end they come down to everyday people like you, and everyday battles like this. And in the end, the world is a better place.”

“Truly moving, Father,” Layla said. “What a speech.”

Dad’s eyes narrowed. “You do know that it’s because of you girls that I’m called to fight. Everything I do is for the two of you and the world you’re going to grow up in—the world your
children
are going to grow up in.”

“Nothing’s even happened yet.” Verna’s voice came out much softer than she intended.

“I’m not having children. In fact, I think I’m a lesbian,” Layla said.

Mother made an exasperated noise and threw her napkin down on the table, and Dad put a hand on her arm. “She’s just trying to get to you, Michelle.” He looked at Layla. “You know, just because you’re going through a phase where you don’t think big ideas are cool doesn’t mean they’re not important.”

“Oh, I’m an enormous fan of big ideas. Free will. Intellectual curiosity.”

“God gave us those things,” Mother said. Her cheeks were pink but her voice was level. “It’s up to us to use them wisely.”

Layla laughed. “Sure. And waging Holy War Part Two to keep Verna from finding out how to use a condom is totally using God’s gifts wisely.” Layla pulled her knife out of the chili and put it on top of her white cloth napkin. “Maybe if you’d taken Hensley’s class, you wouldn’t have had to buy your prom dress in the maternity section.”

“Enough,” Dad said. There was a long silence. When he spoke again, his voice was deliberately gentle. “A year ago, you didn’t think our fight with Karen Hensley and Tom Guarda was unimportant. You didn’t think it made your life a living hell.”

Which was also true; Layla had walked around for weeks like one of the old Christian martyrs, almost seeming to shine from the inside. But at that last school board meeting—which Verna had found terrible, Dad’s sticky red face and the unpleasant jut of Mother’s chin, kind-looking Mrs. Hensley nearly reduced to tears and everybody in the room shouting for one side or another—even Layla’s brow had furrowed. She hadn’t been shining then.

“Wrong,” Layla said now. “I didn’t tell you that it was making my life a living hell, because you told me I was doing God’s work, and I was stupid and naïve enough to believe you.”

Dad shook his head sadly. “Why are you so determined to shut God out of your heart, Layla?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Layla said, and then things really exploded. Mother was screaming and Dad was screaming and Layla was screaming, and Dad’s face grew redder and redder and at one point Layla screamed,
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck MOTHERfuck,”
and Verna put her hands over her ears because she didn’t want to hear any more.

Later, after Layla left the house in a cacophony of slammed doors and thumping bass from her new car’s stereo (bedtime came and went and still no Layla, so much for the contract), Verna lay in bed and
prayed:
Lord, I love my family, but I hate them when they’re together. Forgive me, Lord. Help me not to hate them. Amen
.

Verna was surprised at how bleak life became, and how quickly. Her classes all covered bland introductory stuff that she already knew. Calleigh Brinker hit her in the back twice with a tennis ball on Wednesday. In the locker room, she dumped Verna’s gym bag out on the floor and said, “My aunt is teaching day care now, by the way. Thanks to your dad she’s up to her arms in shit, and so are you.”

Verna said nothing. What could she say?

Once upon a time, going to school had meant spending a few pleasant hours a day at the warm honey-colored wood of her mother’s kitchen table: classifying leaves, reading about Laura Ingalls and Betsy and Tacy, doing math worksheets printed off the Internet. Now she ate lunch at one end of a long empty table in the lonely, deafening cafeteria, a table covered with battered gray Formica into which somebody had scratched
Ashleigh Riccoli is down to fuck
. On her way up to history, she often caught a glimpse of Layla standing by the fire exit at the end of the second-floor corridor with Justinian and another girl, whose cropped blue hair and pierced lip marked her as one of them. Lots of kids at school had dyed hair and a few even had piercings, but Layla and her friends stood out. If there was one thing that Verna’s first week of high school taught her, it was
Thou shalt not stand out
. Thou shalt not stand out by wearing the wrong clothes, the way Verna did the day she wore a long flowered dress that her mother had made and Calleigh called her the Little Whore on the Prairie. Thou shalt not stand out by having a father who’d threatened to take the school board to court. Thou shalt not stand out by having a strange name. Like, for instance, Verna Elshere.

Hey, Venereal, I’d tell you to suck my dick, but I don’t want to catch anything
.

Layla and her friends might skulk in the hallways like disdainful
crows but Verna’s goal became complete anonymity. She wanted to be colorless, featureless, a perfect, bland blank. And so on Thursday afternoon, she found herself standing in the hallway outside the art studio, staring at the wings she’d so innocently drawn on her self-portrait three days earlier and wondering if she could get Mr. Chionchio to take it out of the display case. What had she been thinking? Who had she thought she was?

“I figured it out,” somebody next to her said. “They’re angel wings, right?”

Her tablemate, Jared. They’d been sitting together silently all week. Verna’s cheeks grew hot and she wished again that she’d never drawn the stupid wings in the first place. She shrugged.

He nodded. “Like the Nephilim. That’s cool.” He wore the same baggy sweatshirt and the same dirty glasses, but today she could see a little of his eyes, peeking through his bangs like a rabbit’s through grass. He had a nice voice.

“You know about the Nephilim?” Verna said, surprised.

“Sure. I’ve got a game character who’s a Nephilim.” He looked at her. “Is that right? A Nephilim? Or is Nephilim already plural? Is it Nephila? Anyway, he’s a badass. His charisma is, like, nine billion and any sword he touches bursts into flames.”

Verna had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. “Your picture is really good.”

He’d drawn himself in bold, confident strokes of black crayon, sweatshirt, scraggly bangs, and all. The cartoon boy had no eyes—just hair and glasses—and only a straight line for a mouth. In one hand he held a guitar; in the other, a book. At his feet sat a huge, shaggy dog. The real Jared looked at the picture as if seeing it for the first time. “Oh. Thanks.” He sounded dismissive and a little embarrassed.

“Is that your dog?”

They had walked into the classroom together. Jared dropped his bag next to his stool. “It’s a wolf. Wolves are my power animal.” His
ears turned red. “Not that I buy into the whole power animal thing, exactly, but my mom’s boyfriend does, so—you know.”

Verna didn’t know. “What’s a power animal?”

“They help you.”

She dropped her books onto the table. Her backpack was still stuffed in her locker and her arms and back were always sore. “Do they carry heavy objects?” she said, without really thinking about it. “Because that could be really useful.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Not exactly. They represent your strength, and protect you and stuff.” Jared pulled his fingers through his bangs, tugging them farther down over his nose. “It’s just some New Age crap Keith is into. You’re Verna, right?”

She nodded, and—because it would come up anyway—said, “Layla Elshere is my sister.”

“The goth chick who hangs out with Justin Kemper?”

“You mean Justinian?”

“Huh. Yeah.” Jared’s face was invisible behind his hair, but Verna thought she heard a hint of contempt in his voice.

“I don’t really know any of Layla’s friends,” she said. “You don’t like him?”

“I’ve never really talked to him. I only moved here in April.” He paused for a moment and then said, “It’s sort of stupid that he calls himself Justinian, though. And the whole vampire thing. It’s just—come on, you know?”

Just then, Mr. Chionchio said, “Okay, folks, listen up,” and started explaining their first unit, which was drawing. Verna only half-listened. The boy in Biology had said something about vampires, too. As soon as Mr. Chionchio had set up a cut orange and a vase for them to draw, she said, “What vampire thing?”

“Oh, you know.” Jared was bent over the paper in front of him. “The whole ‘bright light hurts my spooky night creature eyes’ thing. Look, forget it. He’s your sister’s friend. I’m sure he’s cool. You’re Christian, aren’t you?”

Had somebody noticed her sitting next to him and warned him that hers was the nutso family behind the sex-ed saga? “How did you know?”

“Your cross.” He pointed to Verna’s necklace. “I’m not, though. Christian. And don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t really want to be. I’m open-minded and all that, it’s just not my thing.”

She heard her father’s voice saying,
We can work with open-minded
. But Verna didn’t want to work with anything. Jared was nice and he didn’t make fun of her for drawing angel wings on herself and she’d just spent forty-five minutes being called Gonorrhea Girl by the boys in Biology.